On again, off again: Men in spin over what women wear

It seems to have all gone a bit bantastic on Mediterranean beaches lately, between the banning of burkinis in Cannes and the banning of unofficial reservations via your towel on various Italian beaches, writes Suzanne Harrington

Chuck a towel on the sand to mark your spot for later and it will cost you €200 in Livorno — so far, the local police have confiscated 37 deckchairs, 30 parasols, a cot, some towels, and various items of swimwear.

Use your bikini to reserve your bit of beach and it will be arrested. This is because tourists — filthy, grasping tourists — have been sneaking down to the beach the night before and creating their own little zones amid the prime sunbathing spots via the carefully casual dispersal of beach paraphernalia. Remember towels on sun loungers at dawn around the hotel pool? This is next level.

While the ban in Cannes faces legal challenges — because surely legislation cannot extend to what covers one’s actual body on the beach, rather than covering the beach itself — no such challenge exists on Italian beaches when it comes to taking your towel into custody.

Yet just as the mayor of Cannes does not want women to cover up on the beach, back in the 1990s, another mayor on the Italian Riviera wanted the opposite, declaring that he did not wish to see “fat, ugly women” in his town, especially if they were wearing bikinis.

Andrea Guglieri let it be known that he may have failed Feminism 101 when he suggested that only women who fit his so-called ‘90-60-90 regulation’ — that’s centimetres and female bodies — would be permitted in his town. Fat ladies, he said, should stay away. In another Riviera town, Alassio, such was the mayor’s horror at tourists — male and female — wandering about in their swimwear, that he imposed fines on anyone who strayed off the sandin swimsuits.

Twenty years on, and the Cannes mayor wants women to do the opposite of cover up.

The burkini has also been banned from swimming pools in parts of Bavaria and Austria on ‘hygiene’ grounds. For all kinds of reasons, ostensibly ranging from cultural to aesthetic, but essentially rooted in common-or-garden woman-bothering, men are still having a go at telling women what to wear, what not to wear, and where to wear it.

Even Nigella Lawson, who wore a burkini on Bondi Beach in 2011, apparently put it on because her then-husband preferred his ladies pale. Why not just pop her in a veal crate instead? As I pack for my annual beach holiday on the Med, I am tempted to bring a burkini for the south of France, and a teeny-weeny string bikini for a day trip to Italy.

Perhaps a selection of towels to drape indiscriminately over random beaches. Since when did going on holiday become so militant? You wouldn’t get that on an Irish beach — you’d be too busy with your windbreaker and wellies.

On again, off again: Men in spin over what women wear